The Post-2002 Fragments' Dependency on Modern Editions of the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

This article presents the results of a systematic analysis of 27 unprovenanced post-2002 'Dead Sea Scrolls' fragments, the goal of which has been to test a hypothesis of textual correspondence between fragments and modern editions of the Hebrew Bible. The hypothesis is twofold: (1) There is a line-to-line layout correspondence between some fragments and modern editions of the Hebrew Bible; (2) readings suggested in the critical apparatus by the editors of the modern editions often appear to have been imported onto the fragments. The analysis confirms that six of ten fragments which were known to be modern forgeries at the time this analysis was conducted, as well as five of the remaining seventeen fragments, exhibit this feature. The article therefore illustrates that textual correspondence is in some cases a characteristic of modern forgery, and that some forgeries attest to a banal use of modern editions of the Hebrew Bible in the forgers’ fragment production.